Human cognitive ability, memory in particular, tends to decline with age, although the extent of the decline varies among individuals. Moreover, certain neurological disorders often associated with aging, such as Alzheimer's disease, can significantly affect cognitive abilities (and memory, in particular). For example, in early stages of Alzheimer's, a person can often perform everyday functions involving memory (for example, taking prescription medicine on time, remembering appointments, communicating with people, either face-to-face or over the phone), although such functions may become increasingly challenging as the disease progresses.
At more advanced stages of Alzheimer's, or even in the presence of normal age-related decline of cognitive abilities, a person may require assistance from other people in order to perform everyday cognitive tasks. The need for assistance can be directly correlated with challenge level of the task and the degree of decline in the individual. Commonly used scheduling and planning tools may not be helpful in such situations, because an individual may need a reminder to use the tools themselves. Moreover, such tools are not helpful in dynamically changing situations when a person needs to be reminded to take an action that depends on a previous sequence of actions (for example, going to a particular room to get a particular object and forgetting about this goal en route, etc.). Also, such tools cannot help an individual maintain a conversation in real-time when a person begins forgetting words.
In such situations, therefore, it would be desirable to equip a person with a real-time, adaptive cognitive digital assistant (CDA) that could evaluate the situation, recognize a cognitive task to be performed by a person using sensor inputs, and suggest an action (a word, a reminder about an activity, etc.), while also being able to adapt to the particular person's cognitive issues, behavior, and situations arising in the person's environment.
Moreover, such a need exists in settings beyond those detailed above, because even individuals without cognitive decline (for example, the general population, including young and healthy individuals) can engage in cognitive tasks that are highly challenging, and could potentially utilize such CDA for memory extending reminders and improved decision-making. Existing approaches, however, suffer from a poor ability to recognize the context of a user and deploy assistive aids in an adaptive fashion.